At this time, many business subscribers are unable to fully use public telecommunications networks to obtain competitive advantages because call processing programs which might be tailored for their particular needs are not allowed in today's public telecommunications networks.
Communications carriers have been reluctant to allow subscriber-defined call processing programs to be executed in their networks because there may be negative impacts on the performance of their networks caused by the operations of those programs. For example, a subscriber-defined call processing program which uses too much of a network's resources may prevent other subscribers from completing their calls. Accordingly, for subscriber-defined programs to be acceptable, there must be appropriate safeguards to prevent problems in the rest of the network.